Looking for hope with the Bears and coming up empty

The Bears can’t even sell hope at this point.

That was the beauty of the Cubs’ rebuild. New ownership, a new front office with an architect who had won a couple of World Series. A dismal product at the major-league level, but a minor-league system stuffed with players lauded by Baseball America, which is Playboy magazine for a certain kind of person.

You could see the arrow pointing in an upward direction.

But the Bears don’t have three to five years to be awful, they can’t stockpile draft picks the way a baseball team can and their rookie general manager doesn’t have a track record yet.

Dark clouds tend to make everything look bleak, but it’s hard to see sunshine anywhere in the Bears’ near future. They are 0-3 after a predictably bad loss to the Seahawks on Sunday. Jimmy Clausen can’t move the offense. If hope is the return of the erratic Jay Cutler, then hope isn’t what it used to be.

I suppose the operative word here is “trust.’’ If you’re a Bears fan, you have to trust that general manager Ryan Pace knows what he’s doing, even though he hasn’t earned that trust yet. It’s all you have. Trust that Pace will be better than Phil Emery, and trust that coach John Fox will be better than Marc Trestman. That shouldn’t be hard. Baby steps.

But hope? No, the Bears can’t sell hope yet. First-round pick Kevin White had shin surgery in August and could miss the season. No one has any idea how good he’ll be when he’s healthy. The recent drafts prior to Pace’s arrival were bad. Whenever the Bears take the field, they usually find themselves on the wrong side of a talent deficit.

Start with prayer and then move up to hope. Pray for the top pick in next year’s draft and pray that Pace knows what to do with it. It’s a start.